Diversity and consistency: a case study of regionalised clinical placements for medical students.

Conclusions The decentralised UQ clinical schools deliver a consistent standard of clinical training for medical students in all core clinical rotations across a range of urban, regional and rural clinical settings. Further research is required to monitor the costs versus benefits of regionalised clinical schools for students, local communities and regional healthcare services. What is known about the topic? To help meet the demand of increasing numbers of students, Australian medical schools locate clinical training outside the traditional tertiary hospitals. However the viability of maintaining teaching standards across regional and rural locations is uncertain. What does this paper add? Maintaining teaching standards outside established urban teaching hospitals and across a diverse range of urban, regional and rural clinical settings is viable. What are the implications for practitioners? Decentralised clinical teaching networks provide consistent quality of clinical placements while diversifying exposure to different patient populations and clinical environments. These important outcomes may not only alleviate the strain on clinical teaching resources, but also help address the maldistribution of doctors in Australia. PMID: 25513982 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]
Source: Australian Health Review - Category: Hospital Management Authors: Tags: Aust Health Rev Source Type: research